


what dreams may come

by unintelligiblescreaming



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Gem Weapons, Grief/Mourning, References to Shakespeare, Unrequited Love, Worldbuilding, why the gems look older than they used to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7807189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unintelligiblescreaming/pseuds/unintelligiblescreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rose says she’s going to have a child, Pearl does not understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what dreams may come

**Author's Note:**

> The Major Character Death warning is for Rose dying and becoming Steven.

When Rose tells them that she’s going to have a child, Pearl does not understand.  
  
It’s as simple as that. She is not excited, or panicked, or sorrowful—she merely does not understand. They are not organic creatures, and the creation of more members of their species is a process of craftsmanship, not anything even remotely comparable to the messy and imprecise methods of human reproduction. When Rose looks earnestly around the table at the rest of the Crystal Gems and says, “I’m going to have a baby,” Pearl’s response is to laugh in polite confusion and ask if perhaps she’s misheard.  
  
Rose repeats it. There’s stunned silence.  
  
Amethyst is the first to break it: “Uh… what? _How?_ ”  
  
Now Rose is blushing gently, the way she often does when Greg is mentioned. (Sometimes they act as if they’ve been together for millennia and sometimes as if they met only yesterday, and either way the jealousy burns like an open wound.) “According to Greg the ‘how’ for us isn’t anything at all like with human couples,” she admits. “But over the past month, my form has been flickering in and out. At first I was worried that it was a sign of corruption or magical fatigue, but there’s no weakness or injury or lack of strength. If anything, I'm stronger. And every time, I can feel something changing.” She places a hand over her gem. “Growing.”  
  
“What? But that—” To Pearl it sounds so ridiculously implausible that she’s at a loss for words. “Rose, that could be anything, honestly, it could—”  
  
“It couldn’t be anything but this. Trust me. I know. It’s like when your form dissipates and you’re contained to your gem, and you know what shape you’ll take when you reform, even though you don’t know how you know.”  
  
Rose isn’t blushing anymore, she’s serious and focused in a way that Pearl last remembers seeing during the war. Rose Quartz and only Rose Quartz can make their voice ring with truth like that. Any idea that this strange hypothesis might be untrue vanishes from her mind.  
  
And then Rose explains what exactly this means, and Pearl’s world shatters.

 

* * * *

 

She corners Garnet the next day. “You haven’t said anything this whole time,” she hisses. “Amethyst and I are wrecks over the news, but you haven’t said a word. Did you know this would happen? What do you know, what aren’t you saying? _What?_ ”  
  
Garnet’s expressions are minimal, rarely so uncontrolled, but the indecision is written wide across her face, and her body twists and contorts and glows and begins to tear itself in two. By the time Pearl gasps, realizing what's happening, Ruby and Sapphire are already stumbling into being.

They stagger away from each other, unbalanced, as if they didn't intend to unfuse. It makes sense: they haven’t unfused in fifty-three years.

“I wanted to say something,” Ruby bursts out, crossing her arms and glaring at Sapphire. “If we’d said something we could have stopped it from happening, and we could have figured something else out and Rose wouldn’t have to go away, and—”  
  
“I couldn’t warn you,” Sapphire insists quietly. “Steven’s birth is vital for the future of humanity. I could not risk Rose changing her mind.”  
  
Pearl's voice rises to a shriek. “Humanity?! Who cares about—”  
  
She stops herself.

She _does_ care about humanity, even if at first she only cared about not being a mindless machine, and then only about Rose, and then about Garnet and Amethyst and all the other ones like her who didn’t fit into the world the Diamond Authorities had made, and then finally she cared about humans because she understood that they didn’t fit into that cruel and lifeless world either, and that was why they were so special. Except when Rose plays with human after human and leaves Pearl forlorn and forgotten in the corner, just like serving on Homeworld all over again, sometimes it twists the wrong way in her head and she starts thinking of humanity as the enemy and Rose, Rose Rose _Rose_ , as the only thing that matters anymore.    
  
She still remembers the reasons she fought for this planet. It’s just harder at times like this, and there has never been a time harder than this, and she refuses to say the words out loud for fear that would make them real.

 

* * * *

 

They saw hundreds of gems shattered during the war, hundreds more captured and never freed, hundreds upon hundreds of injuries to be healed by a neat reformation or a tearful moment from their leader. They are not strangers to loss. But this is different, because those times were sudden, unexpected. They never spent months and months going about their daily business, desperately pretending nothing was wrong while they waited for their comrades to die.  
  
Garnet sees their time growing shorter and suggests that they have a meeting, just the Crystal Gems. They end up sitting in a circle, telling stories, saying why they’re all going to miss Rose. Garnet and Amethyst do a lot of talking, trying to keep it light, and Pearl smiles and laughs at all the right moments but it’s _not_ funny and she’s _not_ happy and _nothing about this is worth smiling for_ , and when it comes to be her turn she can’t do anything except cry.  
  
She’s never cried before. She hadn’t known she could. After all, it’s not something a Pearl is supposed to be able to do—they couldn’t function properly if they didn’t have emotions entirely, so instead they are built to contain them, to set them aside so they don’t impede their function. She is used to sadness being a slow ache resting dully in her heart.  
  
But this sorrow is not slow, this sorrow is not dull, and it shakes her body and hammers at her skull and burns her eyes and she can’t see, can’t think, can’t do anything but sob as the universe crumbles around her.

 

* * * *

 

She overhears a conversation between Greg and Amethyst. It’s not in her nature to spy, and of course she didn’t really mean to, she just—  
  
No, there’s no point in lying to herself. She completely intended to eavesdrop, and besides, the very first thing she did for the Crystal Gems was spying on the Diamonds from within plain sight. She lingers near the doorway, still and blending into the background, listening intently to their exchange.  
  
“She said it’s not like dying, or being shattered, or whatever you guys call it,” Greg is saying. “She said it’s more like being reduced to your gem and never being able to come back out. Is that like… is it like sleeping? Is she still gonna be in there watching, even if she can’t talk to us?”  
  
Pearl hears the sound of shuffling feet. “Sleeping and getting poofed are different. Kinda the same, but different too,” Amethyst says awkwardly. “You dream inside your gem too, but it’s not like dreaming when you’re asleep, and I don’t really know how to explain it in words. Usually you stay in your gem because you’re too tired or hurt to have a physical form, and when you get your strength back there’s this period where you’re more aware. That’s how we change our shapes. But if Rose can’t ever have a physical form again, then that probably won’t ever happen.”  
  
Greg lets out a sigh. “So she won’t know what’s happening at all.”  
  
More shuffling. “I don’t know, okay? The way she talks about it, this is something totally different from anything anyone’s ever been through. We don’t know what will happen. For all we know, she might know everything that’s going on, or it might be just like—if she was shattered.” Amethyst’s voice cracks slightly.  
  
Pearl has never had time to wonder what happens to a gem after they’re shattered, if they go somewhere or if they just disappear. It’s not a question that can be answered, so she’s always dismissed it as unimportant.  
  
It doesn’t feel unimportant anymore.

 

* * * *

 

It happens in the space of a human heartbeat: Rose gone, beautiful pink gem alone in the place where she used to be, and then the child is there. Steven. His tiny human heart beats steadily.  
  
Rose is _gone._  
  
Suddenly Pearl can’t breathe, and it hits her so hard she’s breaking apart, and—  
  
—her body is no longer there. She is swallowed by darkness.  
  
In the odd, wandering manner of minds floating within their gems, the words of a human poet come to the forefront of her consciousness. _We end the heartache, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to… To die—to sleep. To sleep—perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come?_  
  
She dreams of poems and roses and battles and purposes.

 

* * * *

 

Eventually she decides to pull herself together.  
  
Not right away, of course, since first she has to make a few alterations. Gems are shaped to fulfill a function, but she learned long ago that it is better to have a _purpose_ instead, and now it seems that her purpose has changed. She's not aware or awake enough to know how just yet, but it has changed. For one thing, she needs to be older. A little taller, a little stronger. Their leader is gone and now they must all lead each other, not to mention themselves, and she can’t do it in the same shape she’s always had.  
  
That much is a conscious thought. There’s something else too, something harder to grasp, a fact about the form she will take and the person she will be. Something that she knows, but doesn’t know how she knows.  
  
When she reforms in the safety of the temple she has learned to call home, she gasps as the realization hits her. She draws her weapon from her gem, needing to be utterly sure.  
  
It’s not a sword. It’s a spear.  
  
_Of course,_ she thinks. _A sword is the weapon of a knight, and I am no longer a knight._  
  
But what is she, if not a knight?  
  
Pearl raises the spear, twirls it in the air, tests the weight of it in her hands. She sets her feet apart in a fighting stance, shoulders set, spear held across her body, unyielding. A guard, then. A protector.  
  
But a protector of whom? She is protective of her friends, but they don’t need someone standing watch over them, they’re perfectly capable of looking after themselves. So who…?  
  
On the other side of the room, Steven gurgles happily in his crib, and the sound hits her ears and she finally _understands_ , for the very first time, that this is not Rose but it _is_ her son, and that is enough.  
  
That is enough.


End file.
